Martyrdom by PEPINSTER CATHERINE

Martyrdom by PEPINSTER CATHERINE

Author:PEPINSTER, CATHERINE [Pepinster Catherine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780281081660
Publisher: SPCK


7

Romero – the martyr who bridged a divide

On 24 March 1980, Robert Runcie, the Bishop of St Albans, was preparing himself for his installation the following day as Archbishop of Canterbury. Runcie was apparently not the new Conservative government’s first choice for the post. This was in the days when 10 Downing Street played a much more influential role in the choice of primate than at present; two names would be submitted and the prime minister of the day would make a selection. Ironically, given that he would go on to have a tense relationship with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Runcie was not the preferred choice of the Church of England; it had recommended Hugh Montefiore first. He was deemed too left wing and so Runcie – an establishment man at first glance, given his army track record – was picked by Thatcher.

Before becoming archbishop, Runcie was the Bishop of St Albans, a city and an episcopal seat that he loved, both named after England’s first Christian martyr, St Alban. As his attention and his prayer that night focused on the following day’s service in Canterbury, the news broke of another martyrdom: that of Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, gunned down while he celebrated Mass in the chapel of the Hospital of Divine Providence.

Romero’s killing, most likely at the hands of assassins commissioned by an extreme right-wing leader, Robert D’Aubuisson, was in some ways inevitable.

Oscar Romero

Born in 1917, Romero chose the priesthood early, attending a junior seminary before graduating from the national seminary of San Salvador. He then went to Rome to study at the Jesuits’ Gregorian University, but had to wait a year before being ordained because he was a year younger than the age of eligibility for the priesthood. As a parish priest, seminary rector and secretary of the bishops’ conference, Romero seemed dutiful and pliant. In his hands the archdiocesan newspaper was a conservative publication. Then, when he was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, it was as if a light went on inside him. His appointment had not been welcomed by progressive priests, infused with Liberation Theology, while the Salvadoran government had welcomed it. But from that moment, he chose to support the poor, speaking out against gross human rights abuses.

Romero’s conversion to the plight of the poor seems to have been inspired by the assassination of a Jesuit priest, Rutilio Grande, less than a month after Romero was appointed archbishop. Grande had worked with the poorer citizens of the country, helping them to create self-reliance groups. Romero, a friend of the Jesuit, said after his death: ‘When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead, I thought, “If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path.”’1

Romero then became much more outspoken on poverty, injustice and brutality, with his words reaching huge numbers of Salvadorans through weekly radio broadcasts in which he listed disappearances, cases of torture, and murders. While he was a man of humility and was self-effacing, he came alive in the pulpit, proving to be a brilliant preacher.



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